Month: January 2016

Just the other day I got an email with this in the subject line: Fifty Shades–Studioe Fabrics Clearance Request. Hmmm, you have my interest. I am not even sure what crossed my mind when I saw that. Actually, I was thinking this it was spam. In any case, I read the body of the email and this is what it said:

“Universal Pictures is in production on the theatrical motion pictures for “Fifty Shades Darker” and “Fifty Shades Freed.“ The films will be directed by award-winning filmmaker James Foley (Glengarry Glen Ross, House of Cards). Both films will again star Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson.

In “Fifty Shades Darker,” Anastasia Steele has broken off her relationship with the tormented young entrepreneur, Christian Grey, to pursue her new career with a publishing company. While Christian wrestles with his inner demons, Ana must confront her feelings of anger and envy of the women who came before her – and make the most important decision of her life.

In “Fifty Shades Freed,” Ana must learn to share Christian’s opulent lifestyle without sacrificing her own identity, Christian must overcome his compulsions while battling the demons of his tormented past – that include a real threat to both their lives.

Production would like to feature your “Race Car Fabric Design” on a blanket as a prop/set dressing that a young Christian Grey has in his childhood bedroom during a flashback to his youth. The young Christian will lay the blanket over his mom and snuggle up next to her.”

With this request we are endeavoring to maintain good community relationships and though it may, or may not be necessary to request your consent to allow us this use, it is our practice nevertheless to contact you in this regard. Kindly confirm that our use as proposed above is acceptable with you by signing the enclosed document and returning it to me as soon as possible.

Below is the print that they want to use for the blanket. This is pattern 3031/88 from Safari Drive by Tim Beaumont.

Long story short, I am honored to have received this request, but do I really want to be associated with such a risque movie? Of course, why not? Now I have a reason to go see the movie since I saw the first 50 Shades Of Gray and it was a little too boring for me. In any case, I am sure that we will start getting barraged with people wanting to use our fabrics in movies, television shows, etc. NOT!

Do you recall the 85th anniversary contest in celebration of The Jaftex Corporation (parent company of Studioe) last year? If not, here is a reminder:Due to the success of the aforementioned contest, we have decided to move forward with another contest…let’s call it the 86th Anniversary Contest for lack of a better name. This isn’t a big momentous anniversary per se, but 86 years is still a long time nonetheless, so why not have another celebration?

We are working on finalizing the fine details of the contest for the official flyer, but I am going to spill the beans and give you the details here before the flyer is circulated. As before, the contest will apply to Studioe Fabrics, The Blank Quilting Corp. and Henry Glass & Co., Inc., but not A.E. Nathan this time around. A raffle ticket is earned by purchasing, for one delivery, either 15 bolts of 44/45″ cottons or 10 bolts of 108″ wide fabrics or multiples thereof at full list price. In other words, if you buy 30 bolts of quilting cottons for one delivery, you get 2 tickets and so on and so forth.

The prizes for the top 4 winners will be credits to buy and free shipping on fabrics selected from any of the participating companies. The credits will range from $500-$2,000. The 5th-10th place winners will get $250 in credit. All winners must be current on their bills with all the Jaftex companies.

The contest begins at once and ends around December. That precise date will be provided in the flyer. Winners will be contacted and their names will be posted on the social media venues of all Jaftex Companies.

We hope you take advantage of this great contest and thank you in advance for your participation. Happy 86th to Jaftex!

This is a follow up blog to one I wrote on September 21, 2015 entitled, “There Are No Shortcuts In Life.” The gist of the blog was about people stealing fabrics from the Jaftex companies, what they did with the fabric and the ultimate consequences. Here is the follow up. In particular, I am referring to the situation where a customer of the SNS North Warehouse was allegedly in cahoots with some of the plant employees (they have been fired). They worked together and were stealing our fabrics, shipping them directly to their own customers and getting paid for it. The selling price to the shop was $1.40 per yard which is so unbelievable because that is significantly below our real cost and even below where we sell closeouts. To not realize that something is fishy here with prices so low, you would really have to be a total idiot. Like the saying goes, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Obviously, it was too good to be true and I would have to say this store owner knew good and well what he was doing. Moreover, this probably wasn’t his first time doing this….just another person looking for a shortcut and claiming ignorance.

In any case, when I first found out about this, I contacted the store owner in question. After the owner tried to claim that he had no idea the goods were stolen, he did decide to cooperate and help us collect evidence against the real criminals which was nice of him. While the investigation went on however, I asked the fabric store owner to take the fabric off his shelves because I didn’t want him hurting our reputation by selling the fabric below $3.00 (a ridiculously low price). So now everything is all good and well and the investigation is on to find the real culprits. So I contact the store owner again more recently to find out from him that he sold all the 200 plus bolts of our fabric….at $2.99/yard. The owner assumed the situation had been resolved and he could sell the fabrics now. DUH!

In my mind, this was certainly not resolved, and I was shocked how foolish this guy was to have sold the stolen goods in question after all that he had learned about the situation. So my legal cap came on and I told him that he made a very bad move. I explained to him that he is killing our brand name, making all of our legitimate, full-price paying customers in his area furious with us and he would have to pay the price for what he did. Long story short, I was so pleased to come back from the new year with a nice settlement check sitting on my desk. To me, that was confirmation that this guy know he did wrong. That all being said, it doesn’t help all of our hard working legitimate quilt shop customers that have suffered due to others who have cheated.There is a lot to learn from this.1. There are no shortcuts in life.2. Stealing and cheating doesn’t pay.3. If you see something, say something. To all the shop owners out there, if you hear people are selling our newest lines of fabrics at way below market prices, you need to let us know asap. We would never do anything like this to harm you. We value all of you tons and are sorry that you have been damaged. Hopefully we have put an end to this.4. If you try to cheat any of our companies, I will be sure to go after you by all means necessary. We will not tolerate this behavior.

Hi Everybody,Happy New Year! I have been in the office for about half the day now and my brain is just starting to get back in synch with the fabric world. Needless to say, I had a nice holiday and have cleared my mind of 2015, but I am just not ready to blog it up yet in 2016. So with that, I say to you, happy 2016! Good luck in keeping to all those New Year’s resolutions. And please please please give me some subjects to blog about. Until next week!CheersSlow to get started Scott